German, Polish leaders honor Holocaust victims

[January 27, 2011]  OSWIECIM, Poland (AP) -- Germany's president said Thursday that each generation must grapple anew with the crimes of the Nazi era, as German and Polish leaders and Holocaust survivors prepared for ceremonies marking the 66th anniversary of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp's liberation.

Nazi Germany killed about 1.1 million Jews, Gypsies and others at the site then in occupied Poland. The camp was liberated on Jan. 27, 1945 by the Soviet army.

Christian Wulff said before the ceremonies at the Auschwitz site that each generation must consider how civilization broke down in the Nazi era and work to prevent such crimes from ever repeating.

In Berlin, the German parliament convened Thursday for a special session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust.

Parliamentary President Norbert Lammert reminded lawmakers it is the duty of later generations to keep alive the memory of those murdered by the Nazis. For the first time, a survivor representing Sinti and Roma, or Gypsies, addressed the body, reminding lawmakers of what he called the "forgotten Holocaust" against 500,000 of his people.

Political prisoners, gays and lesbians and Jehovah's witnesses were also killed en mass by the Nazis, along with nearly six million Jews.

"To label people as 'unworthy' and order their 'destruction' and, finally, to systematically murder millions in an industrialized fashion -- that is unique in human history," Lammert said. "The memory of those events and aberrations obliges us to respect all people equally ... and to confront violations of human rights in Germany and everywhere else in the world."

Separate ceremonies were held elsewhere in Germany, including at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where elderly survivors gathered and a new memorial in the former factory of the company that made the crematoria ovens for the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Auschwitz was the most notorious of the Nazi's many death and concentration camps and the date of its liberation was chosen as International Holocaust Remembrance Day by the United Nations in 2005.

[Associated Press]

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.